Top 140 Laurence J. Peter Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small.”

— Laurence J. Peter

52. “Many live by their wits but few by their wit.”

— Laurence J. Peter

53. “Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one.”

— Laurence J. Peter

54. “Middle age is when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work.”

— Laurence J. Peter

55. “Poetry is that which is lost in translation.”

— Laurence J. Peter

56. “Prejudice is one of the world’s greatest labor-saving devices; it enables you to form an opinion without having to dig up the facts.”

— Laurence J. Peter

57. “A true friend will see you through when others see that you are through.”

— Laurence J. Peter

58. “Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.”

— Laurence J. Peter

59. “Two things reduce prejudice: education and laughter.”

— Laurence J. Peter

60. “Good followers do not become good leaders.”

— Laurence J. Peter

61. “He laughs best whose laugh lasts.”

— Laurence J. Peter

62. “Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.”

— Laurence J. Peter

63. “Few of us ever test our powers of deduction, except when filling out an income tax form.”

— Laurence J. Peter

64. “Lead, follow or get of the way.”

— Laurence J. Peter

65. “It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.”

— Laurence J. Peter

66. “Ignorance once dispelled is difficult to reestablish.”

— Laurence J. Peter

67. “As individuals we tend to climb to our levels of incompetence. We behave as though up is better and more is better, and yet all around us we see the tragic victims of this mindless escalation.”

— Laurence J. Peter

68. “In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.”

— Laurence J. Peter

69. “We are members of a strange species that devotes its energies to climbing the ladder of success in order to make money to buy things we don’t like.”

— Laurence J. Peter

70. “In most hierarchies, supercompetence is more objectionable than incompetence.”

— Laurence J. Peter

71. “Dr. Peter observed that one reason so many employees are incompetent is that the skills required to get a job often have nothing to do with what is required to do the job itself. The skills required to run a great political campaign have little to do with the skills required to govern.”

— Laurence J. Peter

72. “An optimist is one who makes the best of it when he gets the worst of it.”

— Laurence J. Peter

73. “Computers can solve all kinds of problems except the unemployment problem they create.”

— Laurence J. Peter

74. “Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.”

— Laurence J. Peter

75. “The advantage of modern means of communication is they enable you to worry about things in all of the world.”

— Laurence J. Peter

76. “America is a country that doesn’t know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.”

— Laurence J. Peter

77. “Many an optimist has become rich simply by buying out a pessimist.”

— Laurence J. Peter

78. “There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.”

— Laurence J. Peter

79. “It’s strange that men should take up crime when there are so many legal ways to be dishonest.”

— Laurence J. Peter

80. “America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.”

— Laurence J. Peter

81. “A bore is a person who lights up the room simply by leaving it.”

— Laurence J. Peter

82. “The seaman tells stories of winds, the ploughman of bulls; the soldier details his wounds, the shepherd his sheep.”

— Laurence J. Peter

83. “Two can live as cheaply as one – if they both have good jobs.”

— Laurence J. Peter

84. “All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect. Each scientific discovery increases man’s ability to predict the consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events.”

— Laurence J. Peter

85. “If you can’t keep up, drag them down to your level.”

— Laurence J. Peter

86. “Humility is the embarrassment you feel when you tell people how wonderful you are.”

— Laurence J. Peter

87. “Home is where the college student home for the holidays isn’t.”

— Laurence J. Peter

88. “An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.”

— Laurence J. Peter

89. “Only mediocrities rise to the top in a system that won’t tolerate wave making.”

— Laurence J. Peter

90. “Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work.”

— Laurence J. Peter

91. “You can always tell a real friend; when you’ve made a fool of yourself, he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.”

— Laurence J. Peter

92. “A man convinced against his will is not convinced.”

— Laurence J. Peter

93. “Slump, and the world slumps with you. Push, and you push alone.”

— Laurence J. Peter

94. “Never stand when you can sit; never walk when you can ride; never Push when you can Pull.”

— Laurence J. Peter

95. “If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.”

— Laurence J. Peter

96. “When in doubt or danger, run in circles, scream and shout.”

— Laurence J. Peter

97. “I inherited my ability from both parents; my mother’s ability for spending money, and my father’s ability for not earning it.”

— Laurence J. Peter

98. “A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.”

— Laurence J. Peter

99. “Any government, whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, a communistic or free enterprise bureaucracy, will fall when its hierarchy reaches an intolerable state of maturity.”

— Laurence J. Peter

100. “We hate to have some people give us advice because we know how badly they need it themselves.”

— Laurence J. Peter